3DStudio Max by Autodesk is a dynamic modeling and rendering software suite for the Microsoft Windows platform used by animators all around the world in the creation of games, films, videos, architectural renderings, and advertisements. The program is quite muscular, allowing animators to work with thousands of objects at a time in the scene.

The software has proven itself a powerful effects tool in a wide range of motion pictures, including Armageddon, The Green Mile, Mission Impossible II, Tomb Raider, and Con Air. It was also used as a modeling and animation tool in the creation of popular games including Max Payne, Star Wars Starfighter, Spiderman: The Movie Game, Halo, and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.

The software offers a wide range of design tools used in the animation industry today, including polygon modeling features with pre-defined standard and extended primitive sets. Its physics engine applies the forces of nature to your animated models. 3DStudio Max also provides scan-line rendering, mental ray rendering, and architectural rendering, and it an be integrated with popular animation software like RenderMan.

Autodesk claims that the new, eighth edition of the software is faster than ever, providing instant visual reviews of renderings without compromising time and cost limitations. The user interface has also been redesigned to handle large, complex animation scenes to allow grouping, cloning, and other interactions with ease.

3DStudio Max has also been fitted to work seamlessly with particle, texture, character, cartoon, landscape, and other rendering plug-ins used throughout the animation industry.